Music Conservatory Websites in China 

(and an impressive site on Chinese instruments, cont'd)

 

 

Most of the Conservatory websites mainly provide brief factual information on departments, study fields and study regulations, and are in Chinese only; some have a few sections in English (if the button is working).

The Shanghai site is exceptional in that it links to an archive of historical Chinese and Asian instruments, including music instruments of regional minorities. It's possible to take a virtual tour of the Eastern Instruments Museum (Dongfang yueqi bowoguan), which is affiliated with the Conservatory and is also located in Shanghai (on Gao An street, no.18 lane). If you click on the icon, you can move to target points in the floor plan of the museum, and zoom in on instruments and explanations. It's then also possible to look at threedimensional displays of individual instruments: objects in photo still begin to spin around if you click the spin button). No musical sounds yet, but we can only assume that that will be a matter of time...

 

Apart from this, the Shanghai Conservatory is planning a future substantial online archive of field recordings, under the auspices of the Conservatory's Centre for Ritual Music Studies. The archive is currently still under construction, and not yet available on the internet yet. More generally, we expect these and the other Conservatory sites to gain growing relevance over time, so here's a preliminary list:

 

The Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing provides news in both English and Chinese on conservatory concerts, competitions and prize-winning student performances and more on: http://www.ccom.edu.cn/news/

The Shanghai Conservatory of Music's website can be visited at http://www.shcmusic.edu.cn/ 

It has sections in English, but its language button currently seems to be disfunctioning, or perhaps the English parts are still under cosntruction. For a virtual tour of the Eastern Instruments Museum, you can go to here.From there, if you click on 全景漫游 you will get to see an animation film with music which you can skip, after which a floorplan of the museum appears. Click on any of the blue target points to enter the museum and take a look around. If you click on the icon of any individual instrument, that instrument will pop up in a separate window with extra information, and you can make it spin and examine it from all angles.

 

The China Music Conservatory in Beijing can be found at http://www.ccmusic.edu.cn/ccmusic/mainweb/index.html 

The Wuhan Conservatory of Music at http://www.whcm.edu.cn/ 

The Sichuan Conservatory of Music at http://www.sccm.cn/  

All three have English language sections which appear to be outdated.

 

The websites of the other conservatories (in Chinese only) are:

Zhejiang Conservatory: www.zjcm.edu.cn/news/xyjj/index.html

Tianjin Conservatory: http://www.tjcm.edu.cn/

Xi'an Conservatory: http://www.xacom.edu.cn/

Xinghai Conservatory: http://www.xhcom.edu.cn/

Shenyang Conservatory: http://www.sycm.com.cn/

Harbin Conservatory: http://www.hrbcm.edu.cn/